Outdoorsman Thread

[Quick Steel]

OH, That is a very interesting description of your successful hunt; and brought to life by your choice of photos. Nicely done sir.

[Colonel26]

I went walking through the woods yesterday looking for dry land fish (morel mushrooms). I didn't find any. But I did find where the turkeys had been scratching, and lots of pretty scenery.

I took one of my best buddies with me too. He had a ball. This is Waylon. He's a 3 year old English Shepherd, and a fine friend.

[treefarmer]

Always good stuff on the Outdoorman Thread!

Good turkey gobbler, Bruce. Couldn't tell much about his beard but your last picture showed what it's all about, fried turkey breast! As for them beards, spurs and fans, they're just like antlers, you can't eat 'em but they are nice to have.

Wade, looks like you had a great time ramblin' in the creation! It's hard to beat a good 4 legged companion on a stroll through the woods. When is the season for the morels?

I love mushrooms but have never been with anyone who can identify the edible ones here in Florida. I see morels mentioned on our forum ever so often but my limited research shows that we won't find many in Florida. Most all of the articles concerning mushrooms were written by a bunch of druggies (and the articles are endless). They gave advice about how to slip into a pasture to gather their mushrooms, how to avoid the land owners and law enforcement and even legal advice concerning how to present your case in court. Some of the tactics reminded me of how some folks used to poach deer on the big ranches of central Florida, being dropped off, etc.. All I was asking the 'puter was tell me about the edible mushrooms in the Florida woods. When we were growin' up, the old folks referred to the mushrooms as "toad stools" and you weren't supposed to mess with 'em 'cause they were poison!
Treefarmer

[Old Hunter]

Thank you gentlemen, I appreciate the kind comments. His stats were: Right spur 1" (chipped), Left spur 1-1/8", Beard 9-1/8", 20 lb., 8 oz. Based on info provided by NCWRC he is a third year bird. I just took a cooler full of wild game to a good buddy of mine - he's in charge of cooking for the Boy Scout Council's wild game feast this Thursday night - he was short of game and was looking hard for some - he got the fresh turkey and some other good stuff I could spare. Now I've got to get another gobbler!

Wade, wish I could identify mushrooms - if I had someone to teach me I guess I could learn (I'm not too old a dog, yet!) OH

[Colonel26]

Bruce I thought I had commented on your turkey. Maybe I did and didn't submit, I have those moments. It's a nice one for sure. Good eating.

I don't really know my mushrooms. But dry land fish as we call em are a different matter all together. They show up here in late March and April, right about the time the may apples come up. I'm really no good at finding them, but I know folks that seem to be able to just make them magically appear.

Wash them, slice them long ways, roll in cornmeal, and fry. Delicious.

It was a little dry yesterday. But it's raining right now. There might be some up tomorrow. Sounds like me and Waylon need to go try it again.

[tendots]

Grandpa used to say:Women are like mushrooms,if you pick the wrong one you end up bad.

[muskrat man]

Found 8 grey morels yesterday, the woods I normally hunt had been walked to death. Sucks you have a good spot, then someone finds out about it and tells their buddy and they tell their buddies and then they tell their buddies and next thing you know you're walking shoulder to shoulder with people trying to pick a mess of 'shrooms. 15-20 years ago we would find sack fulls in this woods now between 3 people you're lucky to find enough to make a mess.

Hitting a different spot today. I found 16 lbs on easter sunday at this spot a few years ago, hopefully it hasn't suffered from blabbermouths too

[treefarmer]

Muskrat Man's tale of woe about the mushroom site reminds me of an incident about 45 years ago. A friend and I that worked with at the Pollution Control Department in Orange County Florida always had great fishing opportunities due to the fact our job kept us on the lakes, creeks, ponds and rivers. (Orlando hadn't totally exploded at that time but the growing population was what caused us to move to west Florida.)

We were drawing water samples where Colonial Drive crosses the Little Econlockhatchee River, actually nothing more than a black water creek. The is the Little Econ and further east is the Big Econ, part of the St.Johns River basin. While getting our water samples we noticed a lot of fish activity. Segments of the Little Econ had been channelized due to development before all the environmental regulations came into play. The point we were sampling was where the natural creek poured into a channel that had a series of flood control structures (dams). We came back after work to fish and caught and released over 50 bass in less than an hour. We did that for several days then got tired of it. We happened by there a few days later and it was as MM described the mushroom hunting, it was shoulder to shoulder . We both denied telling anyone about the spot and that is probably right as this was beside the main east west thoroughfare in Orlando at that time. The catch and release didn't happen too often with us but the reason for it on those occasions was there were at least a dozen small sewage treatment plants dumping their effluent up stream from where we fished. The sections of creek that ran through undisturbed swamps worked as a natural filter removing much of the nutrients that the stp's dumped at that time. All the same, we chose not to keep a limit and not eat any of 'em.

This reminds me of another tale on that same creek. "The powers that be", decided to drop the water levels in the flood control pools, the channelized creek , no more than a canal, mowed grass on both banks. At the last dam where it poured back into the natural creek bottom we were required to take water samples during the draw down (gates open). The biologist told us the DO (dissolved oxygen) reading was dropping as they had warned the big shots. He said we were in for a big fish kill. In our monitoring, a day or so later, we noticed thousands of channel catfish swimming near the surface on the down stream side of the last dam. They were in distress due to the low DO. Right after work we took our persoanal 12' aluminum jon boats, pickups and long handled dip nets and proceeded to capture literally 2 pickup truck beds full of marketable channel catfish. We were able to sell them to a fish house in Kissimmee that night, whole.

The next time we tried that, we decided we would clean the catfish as you naturally would get a better price per pound. Lesson learned, when you are literally looking at jon boat full of catfish it ain't worth it! We cleaned fish the most of the night and had to go to work that morning, young and full of vinegar. I need to add, the days following the draw downs we were on site, monitoring the water with a DO meter, observing the fish kill and watching crews from the Road and Bridge department scoopin' up dead fish.

What I would give for pictures documenting some of our escapade when I worked for that agency! There are a few pictures and new clippings in an old photo album of a those days when we were young and foolish. We were on TV and pretty often in the Sentinel Star local paper, concerning water pollution issues as it was the big thing in the early 70's.

Another tale, y'all know about Muscovy Ducks. They are the cute little yellow Easter ducks that turn into big ugly black and white, nasty critters that live on the docks and in the waterways behind some homes. The developers dig out a bog, back fill it, build a subdivision and sell water front lots actually drainage canals that led to a lake. Well the ducks began to die and we did an investigation, every agency was involved, the Game Commission, Animal Control, the county health department and you guessed it, Pollution Control. After all the excitement,, it was determined the ducks were being overcome with a botulism that caused a condition known as "rubber neck". The critters lost control of their heads and neck, kinda' paralyzed from the shoulders up, you know similar to some of the political leaders of our great country. The ducks that were involved were placed in animal control trucks and rushed to a vet (according to the news) never to be heard from again. Well the bleedin' heart home owners association wanted something done so their remaining, beautiful manure machines would not end up like the ones that were headed to the "vet's office". Some one, again, "the powers that be", decided the ducks should be captured and removed to a more favorable environment.
I'll add, we had all kinds of boats in our department. We had a big, for that day and time, runabout with a 100 horse outboard, a 17' tri-hull that was our shocking boat, 2 air boats and some special built jon boats. These little jon boats were 8' long but were the same width as a 18' aluminum jon boat. Equipped with a 9.8 Merc, two men could do a lot in a small space. Being we were young and invincible, we had learned to turn those little boats in 180 and 360 turns just like cuttin' the fool in an airboat. So we had plenty of water to run in and we captured a pile of Muskoys, put 'em in the dog boxes on the animal control trucks.

This event was filmed by a local TV station and was quite an item for a day or two. After explaining the biological issues happening to the ducks and the plan to move them to a "safe space" , they filmed us capturing the ducks, runnin' up and down the canal wide open and scoopin' up the live ducks, almost like the catfish. What was hilarious, the TV folks set the film to William Tell Overture, "Lone Ranger music" to us rednecks.

The tale gets better! The "safe space" release was in a beautiful small lake that was within the bounds of an orange grove. It was a very well preserved lake with a large buffer zone to help eliminate runoff from the grove, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.. In this almost pristine pond there was also a gator. In just a few weeks the ducks had apparently "migrated" to the happy huntin' ground.

Hope y'all got a little glimpse of early pollution control activities through the eyes of a young field technician in Orange County, FL, around 1971.
Treefarmer

[Colonel26]

TF, that sounds more like recreation than work.

Mm, that stinks.

I haven't found any dry land fish yet. But I have seen some pretty sights in the woods. The other day the boys and I went to a farm we call the catfish ponds. Years ago the owner had some big ponds built in a creek channel and raised catfish. It owned by an absentee land owner now, all the fish are gone, but there's pretty good hunting on it. He area around the Linda has gone back to woods, and the row crop land is cropped by one of the families at church.

Here are some pics. Look at the bid hollow tree. Two grown men couldn't reach around it. Notice the "little" eggs in the lower right, and the zoomed in pic. Those are buzzard eggs.

[Dinadan]

Old hunter, that is a fine gobbler. Good photos and a well told tale as well - thanks!

Colonel - looks like you had a good outing even if you found no morels. I do not think that we have morels here along the Gulf Coast. I do occasionally gather and eat wild shroons if I happen to find good growth of oyster mushrooms or of puffballs. I do not gather mushroom shaped mushrooms. After studying some mushroom identification books (decades ago) I decided that figuring out the exact species of some of those mushrooms was kind of tricky.

I do recall that a librarian lady who was checking out my mushroom books told me that she would never eat wild mushrooms because she would be terrified that she might get a hallucinogenic mushroom. I found it interesting that she was more terrified of hallucinogens than of death, since we have very deadly mushrooms here.

[Quick Steel]

treefarmer, thanks for those very interesting adventures. It does sound like great work, definitely so for anyone who enjoys the outdoors.

[muskrat man]

That's a great story treefarmer, I highly enjoyed it. I did manage to find about 20 morels yesterday, less than half what I was hoping for but enough to have an omelet in the morning. Kinda dry, hopefully we get some good rains before the season's out. Here is a couple of the bigger ones I found.

[Dinadan]

Tasty looking morels there, MM.

Mulberries are ripe in my area. I have a semi dwarf mulberry tree in my garden and birds are loving it right now. It is even better since I have allowed a wild grape vine to twine through the tree. Here are a few photos of the tree, the berries, and the berry eaters.

[Quick Steel]

Great photos Dinadin. Those Cedar Waxwings are so elegant.

[FRJ]

Great photos, Mel. I love the birds. The Cat Bird is one of my favorites, but you have some nice pictures there.

[TripleF]

Knice shrooms Kaleb!

Love bird pics! Great job Mel!

[Old Hunter]

Good luck on your continued quest Muskrat Man.

Really enjoying your birding photo's Mel.

OH

[jmh58]

Very nice bird pics there.. KOOL!!! John

[Dinadan]

Thanks for the kind words, fellows.

Quick Steel - Elegant is a good word for the waxwings ... if they were men I would want to meet their taylor!

Joe - I like catbirds too. They tend to stay out of sight in dense brush, at least in my area. But mulberries, blueberries, and pokeweed berries will draw them out into the open.

[Old Hunter]

Man o' man, my knife budget is taking a hit! I've been a hunter for nearly all my life, but just got back into fishing in the last few years and only seriously in the last year. Between boat maintenance and boat items and fishing items I am spending up all my knife collecting money - just got back from Dunham's with a new 9' Ugly Stick for surf fishing - luckily i have a good spinning reel for it. OH

[muskrat man]

nice bird pics!

I love mulberry time here, jelly, ice cream, juice yuuuuummmmmy!

[Old Hunter]

Here are a few more birds, big birds! Four Jake turkeys that visited my decoy setup this morning - one was pretty big, about the size of a second year tom. OH

[Quick Steel]

Great photo OH. The vegetation in the foreground makes the viewer seem to be right there with you.

[Dinadan]

Very good photo, OH. I like the natural plant frame around the meadow.

[TripleF]

Good stufff Bruce!!